Presence and Persistence of Basque Toponymy in Catalan Pyrenees

Presence and persistence of Basque toponymy in Catalan Pyrenees. Some geographical questions Joan TORT-DONADA 1. Introduction The existence of the Basque language, or Euskara, forming a veritable “linguistic island” (due to its non-Indo-European origin, and to the impossibility of establishing any links with any known language family) in the southeast of Europe, raises interesting questions of a geo- linguistic and geo-historic nature; it also raises interesting questions of onomastics, in general, and of toponymy, in particular. Although today the language is spoken mostly in the autonomous community of the Basque Country and in part of Navarre in Spain, and in the dépar- tement of Pyrénées-Atlantiques in France, it is widely accepted that historically its territory was much broader: specifically, it extended across Aquitaine and much of the Ebro river basin, occupying more than half the mountain chain of the Pyrenees and extending as far even as the western sector of the Catalan Pyrenees.1 Looking beyond the existence of this “linguistic island”, attempts at understanding the Basque language and its toponymy from a his- torical perspective run into a further problem: its somewhat uncertain delimitation with respect to other ancient languages. And, more espe- cially, with respect to Iberian, that is, the palaeo-Hispanic language spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before Latin established itself as the predominant language. Thus, the fact that Basque was a non-Indo-Euro- pean language led experts, among whom we find Wilhelm von Hum- boldt, at the beginning of the 19th century, to question whether they might not in fact be the same language. Along the last five decades the Basque-Iberian theory has been gradually discredited (Velaza 2002: 11-14). 1 The area is defined with greater precision by different authors. See, for instance, Gorrochategui, 1995: 229. Onoma 46 (2011), 97-125. doi: 10.2143/ONO.46.0.2975531. © Onoma. All rights reserved. 996190_ONOMA_46_04.indd6190_ONOMA_46_04.indd 9797 224/04/134/04/13 114:384:38 98 JOAN TORT-DONADA Within this framework, I believe that the current state of affairs is well characterised in the following paragraph taken from the work of Joaquín Gorrochategui, who has studied ancient Basque thorough its ancient onomastics: The linguistic situation of much of Hispania during antiquity remains shrouded in darkness. Although in recent years, major advances have been made in our understanding of palaeo-Hispanic languages, not all the zones of Hispania have benefited equally. (…) The zone of influence of the Basque language—that is, the Spanish and French Basque Country, plus Navarre, plus an extensive territory on both sides of the Western and Central Pyrenees—has traditionally been typified, in common with the whole of the north of the peninsular, by a lack of documentation. This situation has largely hindered any interpretation of language materials themselves and the solving of key questions—such as, the delimitation of the geographical areas of the languages in conflict. (Gorrochategui 1995: 181) Accepting without reservation this situation of “darkness” to which Gorrochategui alludes, in this article I propose reflecting on some of the questions raised above; but not so much from a linguistic point of view, but rather by adopting a geographical perspective. More specifically: I wish to focus my attention on a selection of ancient toponyms from the western sector of the Catalan Pyrenees, regarded by linguists as being of Basque or proto-Basque origin, or at least, pre- Latin, and to analyse them specifically in terms of their geographical dimension. In other words, interpreting as far as possible their correspondence with the realities and circumstances of the region, and with the specific spatial areas to which they are applied. I thus focus my attention on the nature of their meaning, their suitability in relation with the geographical features of place, and their degree of plausibil- ity with respect to the traditional practices of agriculture, livestock farming and forestry in the zone. As I see it, fixing with the greatest degree of precision and for the greatest possible number of cases the correspondence between names and geographical realities should serve as a way of guaranteeing (and, up to a point, of orienting) future lines of research. Above all in a field, such as ancient toponymy, so prone to doubt and the absence of any great certainties. Whatever the case, this study is based on the following premise: the idea that place names, in general, show a much greater tendency 996190_ONOMA_46_04.indd6190_ONOMA_46_04.indd 9898 224/04/134/04/13 114:384:38 PRESENCE OF BASQUE TOPONOMY IN CATALAN PYRENEES 99 to survive over time than do other proper names—such as, for exam- ple, anthroponyms. Toponyms seem to be characterised by their “resistance to substitution” which often makes them markers par excellence of the major upheavals (particularly, in cultural terms) that befall a territory. A process that Francisco Villar sums up as follows: Unlike peoples’ names, the names of geographical relief features and towns tend to survive over the centuries and millennia. The new arrivals to a territory, if they do not exterminate the population, receive from the autochthonous people the names of the rivers, mountains and towns, and they adapt them both phonetically and morphologically to their own language, thus ensuring their continuity, even when the autochthonous people abandon their ancestral language and culture. Each change of language that occurs in a territory results in a certain ‘toponymic mortality’ and, parallel to this, a certain incorporation of toponyms of new creation, the work of the newly arrived; but a broad nucleus of names is maintained. (Villar 2002: 61) 2. The Basque language and its reflection in the toponymy of the Pyrenees. Problems raised by its study The study of the ancient toponymy of the Pyrenees—independent of the question of its relation with the Basque or Iberian languages—remains today, two centuries after the first research undertaken by philologists, an area full of unanswered questions and one of undoubted interest for the expert. In practice, we are dealing with a subject that cannot simply be classified as exotic or of archaeological interest: it concerns a series of place names that constitute an important part of the “major toponymy” (names of towns and villages, mountains and main rivers, and the most important places), and even of the “minor toponymy”, of the Pyrenees. And achieving a better academic understanding, conditioned by the problems noted in the introduction, continues to be a necessary yet, at the same time, an extraordinarily complex task. The leading 20th-century philologist, Joan Coromines, has made a major contribution to this field by raising some basic questions regarding the ancient toponymy of the Pyrenees in his studies dedi- cated, above all, to examining its etymology.2 The author presents a 2 Joan Coromines was one of the most important Catalan linguists of the 20th century. His main publications were the Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e 996190_ONOMA_46_04.indd6190_ONOMA_46_04.indd 9999 224/04/134/04/13 114:384:38 100 JOAN TORT-DONADA theory of the survival of the Basque language up to the 10th century in the western sector of the Catalan Pyrenees, where it coexisted with the Romance languages (Coromines 1965). His theory has been widely questioned in recent years—although this has not meant that he does not have a large number of defenders among Romance philologists today.3 Indeed, while I do not explore this linguistic debate in depth, it would seem that the “state of the question” as established by Coromines at the beginning of his study, and which I summarize below, continues to be significant: The study of the pre-Roman toponyms of the Iberian Peninsula is not as yet a particularly well developed field. We are still lacking many basic notions (…). The nature of pre-Roman languages is very poorly understood, as is the number of these languages and their family relations (…). The hypotheses with which we work are, in general, highly provisional; and even when we have recourse to slightly more solid notions, they usually lack sufficient clarity, sim- plicity or security. In short: if we seek not to wander too far from what is clear and safe, it is evident that in the pre-Romanic toponymy of the Peninsula two groups should be distinguished: the Indo- European and the non-Indo-European toponyms.4 (Coromines 1965: 94-95) And, later, Coromines enters into further detail by raising the question within a more specific geographical framework: the western sector of the Catalan Pyrenees (the easternmost point reached by the Basque language, according to the author, on the threshold of the 10th century). Coromines writes: “These valleys [the highest points of the Val d’Aran, Pallars and Ribagorza] presented, in the middle of the Roman era (10th-11th centuries), a quite unique linguistic pic- ture. A long symbiosis of Basque and Latin gave rise there to a hispánico (1980-1991), the Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua cata- lana (1983-1991) and the Onomasticon Cataloniae (1989-1997), a general etymo- logical dictionary of Catalan onomastics (which includes a total of 45,383 entries). 3 On the problems encountered in the study of the so-called ‘pre-Roman substrate’ in the western sector of the Catalan Pyrenees and on the validity of arguments in favour and against Coromines’ theory see, in particular, Rabella (2007). See, also, Untermann (1999). 4 The italics are mine. 996190_ONOMA_46_04.indd6190_ONOMA_46_04.indd 100100 224/04/134/04/13 114:384:38 PRESENCE OF BASQUE TOPONOMY IN CATALAN PYRENEES 101 toponymy of extremely deviant phonetics. To this day, the toponyms of some places in the area present a highly archaic mixture of Basque and Romance languages.” (Coromines 1965: 121).

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